Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Wondering how you can get more support for student writing in your existing classroom? If you have students write two or more papers, and if you are willing to ask students to create multiple drafts of these papers, consider requesting a Writing Fellow in your Winter or Spring course. SNL faculty who have invited Writing Fellows to accompany their classes have raved about the improvement in students’ thinking and writing:

A description of this opportunity from the University Center for Writing-based learning’s website:

The Writing Fellows Program links undergraduate peer writing tutors with writing-intensive courses across the curriculum -- from physics to journalism, religious studies to computer science.

Like their colleagues in the Writing Center, Writing Fellows are peer tutors specially trained to act as sympathetic readers and advisors, providing informed, constructive criticism to fellow writers. Writing Fellows work with the same set of writers from a particular course for an entire quarter, responding to two of their papers through written comments on drafts and real-time dialogue.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Chicago and the surrounding Chicagoland area offer many writing groups, writing seminars, and writing workshops for those interested in creative writing. DePaul University offers a Masters of Arts in Writing and Publishing, but there are also several programs outside the DePaul Community to help enhance your creative writing skills. Students could use these non-DePaul resources as part of developing an Independent Learning Project on creative writing.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) would like to remind you to schedule your informational presentations for this term. These presentations are a great way to get your students excited about coming to the Writing Groups, a wing of the UCWbL. The Writing Groups meet each Saturday and offer student-centered workshops that allow students to enter into the discussion of academic writing in a workshop setting facilitated by two tutors from the UCWbL. By discussing their own writing as well as the work of other participants, students develop critical reading, thinking, and analytical skills and the ability to articulate and discuss writing. The presentations will make sure that they are aware of Writing Groups as well as the wide variety of services that we offer online, at our Lincoln Park and Loop offices and outposts, and here at the suburban campuses.

Presentations are about fifteen minutes in length and will include (in smart classrooms) a demonstration of our online scheduling service as well as a quick tour of the resources available to students on our website. An experienced tutor or staff member will deliver the presentation and take any questions from both the students and you. If you’d like, our staff members can also briefly tell you and your students about the other four wings of the UCWbL: the Writing Fellows Program, the Suburban Campus Writing Groups, the Collaborative for Multilingual Writing and Research, and Faculty Development.

If you are unable to schedule an in-class presentation with us, we can still deliver promotional materials such as bookmarks to you. Feel free to email the UCWbL at wcenter@depaul.edu with any inquiries about requesting these items. Presentations begin the second week of classes. For more information visit our website at www.depaul.edu/writing.

Suburban Campus Writing Groups are convenient tutoring options for commuters, SNL and suburban campus students, meeting at the Naperville, Oak Forest and O’Hare campuses on Saturdays from 10am-11:30am during each academic term. They are a drop-in tutoring service where students work with Group Leaders and fellow writers in a collaborative setting in which they both receive and provide feedback on written work. Contributing writers will find that all meetings allow them to constructively share their pieces in contexts like one-on-one peer feedback and group workshops, allowing exposure to different audiences and forms of collaboration and group discussion. If you would like more information, check the University Center for Writing-based Learning website at http://condor.depaul.edu/writing/.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Jane Wagoner taught a variety of courses at the City Colleges of Chicago, including ESL, reading, Introduction to Literature, freshman composition, the research paper and developmental English. She has created several hybrid classes and earned a Master’s Online Teaching certificate. In addition, she has begun taking piano lessons and enjoys being a student. Jane loves going to the theater and being a member of the Jane Austen Society. Her BA is from Edgewood College in Madison, WI, and MA from DePaul University.